June

The most active thread by a very considerable margin yesterday was titled, "Official debate thread get in here and bring your smile" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Needless to say, this thread is about last night's presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former president, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. The interest in this thread was amazing and while it was only created just before 9 p.m. last night, it has already reached 85 pages and over 1,100 posts. Obviously, it is not possible for me to read a thread of that length. As for the debate, what can be said? The bar for Biden had been set so low that I didn't believe there would be any way that he would not exceed expectations. Clearly I was wrong. Biden, whose voice was raspy apparently as a result of a cold, was difficult to understand, he repeatedly lost his train of thought, he constantly appeared confused and lost, and, perhaps due to camera angles, almost always seemed to be looking out into space. It's not so much that that Biden didn't reach the low bar that had been set, but rather that he precisely met the expectations that Republicans had set for him. The Republicans claimed that Biden is a feeble, tired, old man who lacks the mental capacity for the job. That is likely exactly how most viewers perceived Biden last night. Republicans are obviously overjoyed and practically dancing in the streets. Democrats, who panic even when things are going well, are completely beside themselves. The airwaves, as well as this thread and at least one additional thread, focused on how Biden might be replaced as the Democratic candidate. As I said in a recent post, replacing Biden is not straight forward and I have generally held the position that it is not going to happen. One hurdle that I don't hear mentioned very often is Ohio's deadline to be on the ballot that is earlier than the Democratic National Convention. The current Democratic plan is to formally nominate Biden through a virtual vote held before Ohio's deadline, in which case the convention would be purely ceremonial. It would take a true act of back room politics to convince Biden to bow out and then agree on an alternative candidate before Ohio's August 7th deadline. This would be an amazing feat and I am not sure that there is anyone in a position to make it happen. Of course Democrats could sacrifice the Ohio ballot position and choose a candidate at the convention, but there is an important Senate race in Ohio and Democratic turnout might suffer if there were not a meaningful Democratic presidential candidate on the ballot. Democrats might even be forced to run a write-in campaign for their candidate. Objectively, Biden had his moments during the debate. But by the time those came along, I think most people had already come to their conclusions about his performance. Moreover, the negative impressions will snowball as they are repeated incessantly over the next few days. While Biden clearly lost the debate, there is still a question of the debate's impact on the election. Plenty of posters in this thread were adamant that Biden could even do worse than he did and they would still vote for him. If polls over the next few days don't show a decline in support for Biden, the interest in replacing him will likely decrease. But, any significant drop-off will create additional impetus to find a new candidate.

Yesterday's most active thread was the thread about Fairfax County Public School boundaries which I discussed some time ago. The thread continues to be active with posters completely freaked out about rezoning plans that I am fairly certain don't actually exist at this point. The most active thread after that one was titled, "Is debate prep a waste of time?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster assumes that former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump will easily win tomorrow's presidential debate and wonders why President Joe Biden is bothering to prepare at all. This post, and a great number of the responses, really demonstrate the MAGA attitude toward knowlege. In short, they consider it better not to have any. Going back to Trump saying that he loves "the poorly educated", MAGAs are suspicious and distrustful of those who who are highly educated. The entire idea of getting prepared for a major event is contemptible to them. Another MAGA characteristic is amnesia. Not a single one of them seems to remember that Trump has also participated in debate preparation. Famously he infected Chris Christie with COVID while they were preparing for Trump's debate against Biden in 2020. This time around Trump is preparing in a less formal manner, but is still preparing. Like Trump, the MAGA posters in this thread can't quite make up their mind about Biden. On the one hand, they describe him as a feeble old man suffering from dementia. On the other hand, they are worried that Biden will easily exceed the very low expectations they have set for him. As a result, like Trump, MAGAs suggest that Biden will be drugged in order to have a good performance during the debate. They are also in full attack mode with regard to the CNN newscasters who will moderate the debate, accusing them of bias and predicting that they will favor Biden. Again, their amnesia prevents them from recalling that Trump and his team agreed to the moderators. Trump is orchestrating, and the DCUM MAGAs are participating in, a combination of referee-working and expectation setting. They seem to believe that if they accuse CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of bias frequently and loudly enough, the two will be intimidated into acting more favorably toward Trump. At the same time, this sets up a ready-made excuse for a poor Trump performance. If Trump does badly in the debate, it will not be because of his own shortcomings such as his lack of mental acuity, grasp of the issues, or failure of preparedness, but rather because the moderators were biased and Biden was on drugs. The MAGAs will not reflect on this thread and ask why Trump did not engage in more intense preparation, but rather will excuse his poor performance because Biden took a week to prepare, as if that is a bad thing. Trump famously when discussing immigration accused Mexico of not sending its best. When I see the quality of MAGA posters in threads such as this, I can't help thinking that Trump himself is not sending the best. Or, even worse, maybe these posters are among the best.

Many of the most active threads over the weekend were ones that I've already discussed and, therefore, will skip today. The first new thread among the most active was titled, "NFL quarterback's wife tells podcast she slept with his backup to make him jealous" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. The original poster embedded a TikTok clip of Kelly Stafford, wife of Matthew Stafford, the quarterback for the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, discussing her early relationship with Mathew. It isn't often that a thread on DCUM makes me downright angry, but this is one of those times. What upset me is that this thread was not posted in good faith and misrepresents the facts to serve the original poster's personal agenda. I am not sure exactly what motivated the original poster, but perhaps jealously. At any rate, in the TikTok clip, Kelly implies that while in college she and Matthew had an on again and off again relationship, saying "I hated him, I loved him" while Matthew was just trying to date casually. Kelly goes on to say that at one point she dated the back-up quarterback who lived in the same dorm as Matthew. She says that she did this to "piss him off" and "it worked." Seeing her car there, Matthew jumped in her car as she was leaving and told her that the backup quarterback was not right for her. It was left unsaid, but we can deduce, that this led to Matthew becoming serious about their relationship. They went on to get married and now have four children. Kelly obviously meant this as a cute and funny story. But the original poster is apparently outraged by this and made it a personal mission to disgrace Kelly to the fullest extent possible. Posting well over 20 times in the thread, the original poster described Kelly as "trashy", "jersey-chasing", an "idle rich housewife", having hit the "bimbo lottery", "shameless and shallow", and a "whore". In addition, the original poster repeatedly accused both Kelly and Matthew of being serial cheaters and also suggested that Kelly's mother had advised her about how to manipulate Matthew. The original poster did not bother identifying herself as the original poster and, as such, her numerous follow-up posts may appear to most posters as coming from different posters. But, having the ability as I do to distinguish the original poster's posts and read them all at once, they paint a picture of someone with a deep-seated psychological problem. Just for the record, in the TikTok, Kelly only said that she "dated" the backup quarterback and didn't detail what level of intimacy may have occurred. The original poster insists that Kelly and the other player had sex, which may be the case but certainly was not confirmed. Moroever, the original poster also made it sound like this occurred while she and Matthew were married, which it obviously did not. Basically, this thread was one person's effort to exercise her own rage over the fact that another women had reached a point in her life in which she could comfortably laugh at earlier behavior about which she may not be particularly proud. Personally, I can unequivocally say that in this thread Kelly Stafford comes off looking considerably better than the original poster.

Yesterday's first and second most active threads were both on the same topic, but in different forums. I didn't know there were two different threads until just now and, having discovered it, I locked one. Rather than discuss the same topic twice, I will combine the two and talk about them both at once. The most active of the two was titled, "Louisiana orders every classroom to display Ten Commandments" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The second was titled, "Ten Commandments at LSU" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The topic both of these threads are discussing is a bill recently signed into law by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry that requires every public school classroom in the state to display a poster of the Ten Commandments. Civil liberties groups are challenging the law which they say is unconstitutional due to violating the Establishment Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Kentucky, ruling in the 1980 case Stone v. Graham that posters of the commandments violated the First Amendment. This suggests that the civil liberties groups are correct and will prevail in their litigation. Though, with today's Supreme Court, who knows? One justice, Samuel Alito, was recently recorded saying that the U.S. should return to a "place of godliness" and will likely support Louisiana. Justice Clarence Thomas has held that the Establishment Clause does not apply to states, meaning that he is also likely to support Louisiana. The Louisiana law attempts to frame the display of the Ten Commandments as being a document of historical value that is important to American history. One issue that I noticed with this law is that there is not a universally agreed upon version of the Ten Commandments. Catholics, for instance, have a different version than most Protestant denominations. Indeed, by my count, the version included in Louisiana's law actually contains 12 commandments. This may be an effort to appease both Catholics and Protestants. Probably the most disappointing aspect of both of these threads is that very few posters showed an inclination to adhere to values. In a perfect world, everyone would have a set of values. They might not be the same values — differences would still exist — but everyone would have some sort of code by which they lived their lives. An issue such as this would be measured against those values. Those who valued separation of church and state would naturally oppose it. Those who valued the spread of Christianity would support it. The two groups could debate in good faith. But that's not what happens in these threads. Instead, partisanship has divided folks into separate tribes and they they react on the basis of tribe rather than values. This is particularly evident among conservatives who normally claim tremendous appreciation of the U.S. Constitution, but in this case are willing to ignore or at least brush off the plain statement that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", the so-called "Establishment Clause". They argue that the U.S. is a Christian nation and, therefore, the Ten Commandments should be an acceptable document. Personally, I look forward to seeing how teachers who conservatives believe should never talk about sexual relations explain the commandment forbidding adultery to young children.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Justin Timberlake arrested on DWI in Hamptons" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. Early yesterday morning, singer and actor Justin Timberlake was arrested in Sag Harbor, New York on charges of driving while intoxicated. The original poster started this thread to discuss the arrest, calling Timberlake a "loser" and saying that he clearly has a drinking problem. Most of those replying agreed with the original poster, having very harsh words for those who endanger others by drinking and driving. There was one Timberlake defender whose primary argument was that Timberlake is rich, though it is not clear how that was supposed to exonerate him. Some posters in the thread also took the opportunity to criticize Timberlake for his alleged treatment of Britney Spears during a past relationship. In Spears' recent book, she described having an abortion after Timberlake said that he was not ready to be a father. Posters were divided about whether Timberlake had coerced Spears into having an abortion or whether he had simply stated his feelings on the matter. Some posters argued that regardless of Timberlake's position, Spears was not ready to be a mother at that time either and terminating the pregnancy was for the better. A few posters were still angry with Timberlake because of the famous "wardrobe malfunction" that occurred between Timberlake and Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl. In that incident, Timberlake performed a choreographed move to remove part of Jackson's top and inadvertently exposed one of her breasts to the television audience. According to the posters who are upset with Timberlake due to the incident, Jackson suffered all the consequences while Timberlake had no repercussions. As is to be expected from any DCUM celebrity thread, there are posters who act like they know Timberlake's personal life better than he does and share what they claim is inside gossip. Most of that is likely false. In addition to the robust abortion debate in the thread, there is also a conversation about alcoholism. This includes a dispute about whether alcoholism — referred to as alcohol use disorder in academic literature and scientific studies — is or is not a disease. This thread demonstrates that at least on DCUM, Timberlake has few remaining fans and has been involved in enough controversies to provide a variety of reasons to dislike him. As such, DCUMers tend to dislike him though not always for the same reason.

The first of yesterday's most active threads that I will discuss was titled, "Shocked at how many families in nice DMV neighborhoods are living in relatives' homes" and posted in the "Real Estate" forum. The original poster says that she has a child who just finished kindergarten in an upscale DC metropolitan area neighborhood and has met "at least a dozen families" who are living in homes owned by elderly relatives. She has also met families in similar living situations in other upscale area neighborhoods and believes this practice is very widespread in the area. The original poster advises others who may be struggling to save a downpayment or afford childcare and who may wonder how others are doing it, that this is one of the ways. She further alleges that this practice is causing others to be shut out of desirable neighborhoods. The high cost of area housing, particularly in highly-desirable neighborhoods, has long been an issue of debate in the DCUM real estate forum. One factor driving up costs is the limited inventory of houses on the market in these neighborhoods. To the extent that elderly residents providing housing to younger relatives rather than selling their homes further constrains inventory, this would obviously limit the available homes for sale and contribute to price increases. Among those responding, there is a bit of a chicken and the egg phenomenon. While some posters, like the original poster, argue that adult child living in their parents' homes helps drive up prices, others suggest that adult children are encouraged to choose such arrangements due to the high cost of housing. A number of those responding are quite aggravated that these parents provide housing to their adult children rather than selling their homes. They consider this one more way in which "boomers" have made things more difficult for younger generations. Never mind that the exact same boomers are making life easier for the members of younger generations for whom they provide housing. Other posters, perhaps some of whom are among that second group who benefits from this practice, are all in favor of it. They cite a number of advantages from the arrangement, especially when parents continue living in the home. That provides either convenient childcare or eldercare as the case may be. Other posters are aware that adult children living in elderly relatives' homes is common in this area, but their feelings about it are heavily influenced by the attitudes of the adult children who are benefiting from this arrangment. In cases where the children are down to earth and recognize that they can only afford to live in the neighborhood due to their relatives' generosity, posters have no problem with them. But, in many cases, posters say that the adult children act entitled and don't seem to understand their advantages. This creates some animosity. The friction created by those who act snobbish despite not having earned their advantages goes beyond their simply being able to live in a nice neighborhood. Posters also complain about these individuals getting access to popular country clubs, often at a reduced rate. This discussion highlights a clear division between the beneficiaries of generational wealth and those who have had to work and pay their own way for everything they have achieved.

The most active thread yesterday was the same one that was the most active the day before. That was the thread about the husband who revealed his college roommate's affair in retaliation for the roommate suggesting that the original poster's daughter was fat. I'll skip that thread and go to the next one which was titled, "Overcrowding/Overenrollment Issues at top tier schools" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster cites two anecdotes involving two different popular universties that suggest those schools are experiencing overcrowding and wants to know which other universities have such issues and how that can be found out. The DCUM college forum has increasingly become one of our more popular forums. Moreover, the caliber of the threads is often quite high with quite a bit of useful information being shared. This thread, unfortunately, is not one of those. Rather, this thread gets bogged down in some of the worst divisions that plague the forum. Many of the forum's participants are obsessed with college rankings and, therefore, it was no surprise that a debate broke out about whether the two universities named by the original poster were really "top tier" schools. The same happened with other colleges named by posters. There was also a debate about whether this was solely an issue with public universities and could be avoided by choosing private colleges. Posters quickly broke into two camps, each defending its favorite type of school and attacking the other. Schools in the University of California system received particularly harsh criticism with a number of extreme allegations about them being made. Those schools also had their defenders, who denied a number of the claims. I had to laugh at one exchange that began after a poster insisted that overcrowding issues were limited to public universities. Another poster provided an anecdote involving Boston University in which the dorms were so crowded that students were housed in hotels. Rather than acknowledge that overcrowding apparently did impact private schools, a poster argued that "being in a hotel in Boston is almost like (or even better than) being in a dorm". But the biggest issue with this thread was the sparsity of substantive data to back up the claims being made. Posters routinely made claims about schools that appeared more likely to be urban legends than reality. When asked to support their allegations, they often turned to sources such as Reddit, provoking incredulity. The discussion in this thread is scattered and goes all over the place with a number of separate topics being discussed. It might have some usefulness for anyone considering University of California schools, but otherwise it is hard to separate fact from fiction.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Who Is Most Out Of Bounds Here?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that she recently posted a graduation photo of her daughter and mentioned the college she plans to attend. An old college roommate of her husband commented on the photo saying that it looked like the girl would enjoy the food at the college, apparently referring to her weight. The original poster says that her daughter "is not fat but she is still carrying a little baby weight around her hips and she is naturally large chested" and that the comment was wildly out of bounds. Her husband flew into a rage and posted a public comment asking the guy if his wife knew about his affair with an old girlfriend. The old roommate's wife saw the comment and has been calling the original poster non-stop leaving angry voicemails accusing the original poster of sabotaging her marriage. The original poster simply told the roommate's wife to take it up with the her own husband and blocked her. The original poster says that she knows that her husband was wrong, but asks whether he justified due to the insult to their daughter. For some reason this thread just took off. As far as I can tell, the original poster hardly provided any additional input. Nevertheless, the thread has already reached 22 pages. Much of that is owed to a small number of posters who apparently got very invested in the thread. Two of them posted over 40 times each, another nearly 60 times, and a fourth over 30 times. It is possible that one of these was the original poster, but I don't have evidence of that. These posters were split with two on each side of the debate. There are several different perspectives in this thread. One is that the old roommate was wrong to alude to the original poster's daughter's weight and is solely responsible for any damage to his marriage because that was caused by his own cheating. In this perspective, the original poster's husband has nothing about which to feel bad. In contrast to that is the view that the roommate's comment was rude, but the original poster's husband's reaction was far too strong. Moreover, his action did not take into account the innocent bystanders who would also be hurt, primarily the roommate's wife. In addition to possibly blowing up the roommate's marriage, hurting his wife and, potentially, any children they have, the original poster's husband sent a dangerous signal to their daughter about her weight. Some posters feared that she would understand that being fat is very bad, possibly triggering an eating disorder. Other posters faulted the original poster's husband for sitting on the knowledge that his roommate had had an affair. They believe that he had a responsibility to inform his roommate's wife earlier. Some of these posters are upset by the original poster's husband's treatment of women, citing his failure to disclose the affair, his lack of concern about the impact of his subsequent revelation on his roommate's wife, and the messages he is sending his daughter about weight. Generally there was plenty of blame to go around in this situation with no agreement on who was the most wrong.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Do women expect a ring at 1 year?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that his one-year anniversary of dating his girlfriend is coming up and he is being pressured by friends and family to propose to her. He is not ready to take that step and feels thats one year is not enough time to decide to make such a commitment and doesn't understand the rush. Apparently the only question that the original poster has is the one in the title of his thread. I don't think any of those responding believed that there is any sort of one-year cut-off at which the original poster would be expected to make a decision. Rather posters emphasized that what is important is what his girlfriend wants. Many posters said that the urgency to get married was strongly correlated to age. Several pointed out that women who plan to have children don't want to waste their fertile years with someone with whom they had no future. Therefore, a younger couple would not necessarily need to make a decision about marriage right away. But that would change with age. The original poster explained that his girlfriend had said she is not in a rush to get married but that she wanted to have children at 30. She is currently 28 and he is 35. One poster quickly did the math and pointed out that if they got engaged now and had a wedding in a year, his girlfriend would be nearly 30 by the time she went through pregnancy. Therefore, it is probably time to think about making the commitment. The point that posters kept emphasizing was that the original poster should think about his girlfriend's needs. It would be really unfair to string her along if he doesn't plan to marry her. In addition, several posters warned that at his age, the original poster might not be able to find anyone better than his current girlfriend. The original poster didn't find that argument convincing and seemed to be certain that he could easily find another girlfriend equal or better than his current one. For no apparent good reason, he argued that it is older women, not older men, who have trouble finding new relationships. The original poster repeatedly pointed out that he is Catholic and neither he nor his family believe in divorce. Therefore, marriage is a very important decision because it will be for life. Frankly, there is something that seems a little off to me about this poster. To hear him tell it, he and his girlfriend are on the same page and the only issue is pressure from others. He describes his life as being completely on track according to his personal goals. So, after being assured that there is not a one-year deadline as he claimed to fear, I am not sure what was left to discuss. The original poster, however, found plenty to discuss, posting over 60 posts in the thread. A significant number of his posts were anti-woman, starting with his views on older women and continuing to his claim that many women expect a man to be their provider and the failure of posters to understand this explained the "many unhappy bitter women on this thread". I very much suspect that this poster is a troll, though I don't have any evidence beyond my intuition to support this suspicion.

Fully six of the ten most active threads over the weekend were ones that I've already discussed. Moreover, two of the remaining four address topics that were the subject of other threads about which I've recently written. As a result, this won't be the most original of posts. I'll start with a thread that was the sixth most active. Titled, "Gaza war and College Campus Protests" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was created instead of a part 4 of the Gaza war thread. When the Gaza war threads have reached 1,000 pages, I have locked them and started a new part. When the previous thread was nearly 1,000, a thread about college campus protests was also getting very long and there was quite a bit of overlap between the two threads. Therefore, I combined them into this thread. The thread is currently 72 pages and I am not going to bother reading very much of it. From what I have read, it appears to consist mostly of the same things over and over. Strategies for debate the war and discussing the protests have really solidified with each side having established its talking points which are simply repeated over and over. Those supporting the Palestinians tend to highlight atrocities being committed by Israeli forces in Gaza and discuss the Biden administration's involvement in supporting such actions. Of course these posters fully support the protesters, whose actions they defend. The pro-Israel posters mostly take the exact opposite positions. They tend to describe the protesters, as well as pro-Palestinian posters in the thread, as being "pro-Hamas". They are unwilling to accept that someone can be opposed to the death and destruction being wrought on Gaza while also opposing Hamas. To them, any opposition to Israel is simply pro-Hamas. They, of course, for the most part are unwilling to recognize any Israeli excesses in Gaza. To the contrary, every action is justified and blamed on Hamas. Ironically, the pro-Israel posters are also critical of Biden at times. There are a few hardliners who actually consider Biden to be pro-Hamas himself. The mutual antagonism of both sides in this thread doesn't make for a very substantive discussion. A lot of it is simply attempts to score points. For instance, the most recent topic of discussion was a disruption by pro-Palestinian protesters of New York's pride parade. Pro-Israel posters claimed that this demonstrated antipathy toward the LGBTQ community on the part of the protesters. Such posters have often highlighted LGBTQ issues due to Hamas' normally anti-gay stances and the generally welcoming environment in Israel. The fact that neither Hamas nor Israel actually measures up to their portrayal is simply one of those details that gets ignored. But the disruption of the parade fed directly into the pro-Israel narrative. In point of fact, some pro-Palestinian protesters have adopted a strategy of disrupting any large event simply to obtain publicity and to demonstrate that they will not be ignored. The parade's disruption was not meant to be anti-gay, but rather to simply draw attention to the plight of Gaza. Whether this is a good strategy or not is another argument. But such nuances are impossible to discuss in threads of this sort.